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Finally, he laid the two letters flat, with their neat, square, painstaking hand-printing, and compared them with the four specimens of the day.

John Boce’s printing was characterized by wiry capitals leaning to the right in an italic sort of way, slapdash, scratchy.

John Thompson’s printing was small, precise, secretive, with a tendency toward rounded corners and convex vertical strokes.

John Viviano’s was spiky Gothic, bold, striking, handsome.

John Pilgrim printed a harsh, firm block. Superficially it most closely resembled the printing of the anonymous notes, although...

Mervyn kept sipping his drink, prepared for a closer analysis. But then he frowned and looked at the dew-beaded highball glass. His tongue felt peculiar, oily and heavy. There was a strange aftertaste in his mouth. He sniffed the highball. Its smell was funny, too, although faintly familiar — an odor with an unpleasant association.

Mervyn’s stomach suddenly rumbled, rebelled. He went over to the sink, wildly studied the label, JIM BEAM. He smelled the contents of the bottle. The same odor, only stronger: a heavy, bitter, oily reek.

His stomach quivered, his throat burned. Bending over the sink, he vomited. For a moment or two he leaned on the drainboard, gasping. He was about to draw a glass of water to rinse out his mouth when his stomach lurched and he fell over the sink and vomited again...

When he staggered to his phone his only coherent thought was: Poison!

The doctor was a brisk, natty man of middle age with every hair intact and the bloom of prosperity. He smelled the bourbon, gingerly tasted it, examined the mess in the sink, took Mervyn’s pulse, put the stethoscope to his chest and back, examined his tongue, throat and eyes, took his blood pressure. He kept hmmmming and nodding to himself. Mervyn tried lamely to say something about his mischievous little nephews and all, but finally he gave up; the doctor was not listening to him.

At last the doctor straightened up. Mervyn thought he looked disappointed. “I don’t think you’re in any trouble, Mr. Gray. You’ve ingested very little of the stuff, and most of it you got rid of.”

“What do you think it is?” Mervyn asked weakly.

“It smells like oil of valerian. It acts more like tincture of ipecac. Maybe a mixture, I can’t be certain. If it’s nothing worse, you’re quite safe. Go to bed, rest. If you feel pains, dizziness or numbness in your hands or feet, call me right away. But I think you’re all right. Just somebody’s idea of a practical joke.”

Practical joke, my eye, Mervyn thought as the doctor departed. He took a few steps and decided that he felt better, although he was still shaky. What if he had swallowed the whole damn highball?

His enemy grew bolder.

Mervyn examined the samples again. All looked sinister. All now seemed to resemble the hand-printing of the two notes.

His stomach gave an angry grumble of hunger. He boiled two eggs, made toast, poured a glass of milk, wolfed the food down with the voracity of a man who must reassure himself that he is indeed still in the land of the living.

Afterward he poured the doctored whiskey into the sink, fighting his stomach’s twitching over the odor.

Then he went to bed.

The next morning Mervyn waited grimly for the mail. When it arrived he took the plain, cheap envelope back to his apartment and ripped it open impatiently.

The third message read:

CONFESS OR YOU’LL BE SORRY.

Chapter 9

Mervyn took Telegraph Avenue to the campus. It was Friday, the day John Thompson performed his weekend disappearing act. As he walked through Sather Gate, Mervyn cased the library.

John Thompson could use any one of three or four exits on his way to his car. Unless Mervyn were parked nearby, the librarian could drive away without Mervyn’s being aware that he had left.

Deep in thought, Mervyn trudged out onto the mall in front of the Student Union. He almost bumped into Oleg Malinski, who greeted him cordially.

“You’re working too hard. You look dreadful, Mervyn. Is it the thesis?”

“No,” muttered Mervyn. “It’s personal. If I had any sense, Oleg, I’d leave town.”

“My philosophy precisely,” Malinski declared. “When annoyances press in upon you — flee! Depart! Evade! Escape! Why fight the city hall? Did King Canute find satisfaction in defying the tide?”

“You’re so right,” Mervyn said mournfully. “Oh, incidentally, I visited your friend Viviano yesterday.”

“Indeed? Surprising!” The little optical engineer’s bushy mustache quivered with interest.

“Why surprising?”

“I should never have expected you to become friendly with Viviano.”

“Right again,” Mervyn said. “I went to ask him where he spent last Friday night.”

Malinski laughed. “What did he tell you?”

“Nothing. He denied knowing anything about Mary.”

“Ah, now I understand. It is Mary who worries you.”

“The absence of Mary. She hasn’t even communicated with Susie.”

“Hm.” Malinski looked speculative, and Mervyn felt a sudden alarm. Eventually Mary’s disappearance would come to the attention of the police, and someone would be certain to remember his investigations. One thing at a time, he admonished himself. “Oleg, would you happen to know where Viviano spent Friday night?”

But Malinski had been distracted by the contours of a girl in tight pink shorts. She passed, her brown ponytail twitching in tempo with her nubile bottom; Malinski’s head swiveled like a compass needle. “Ah, youth,” the little man sighed. “When I walk through the campus among so many beautiful girls, a hopeless sensation overcomes me — all those precious commodities going to waste! Beauty evaporating by the instant!”

Malinski’s regret evaporated, too. He said briskly, “Ah, well. You were inquiring about John Viviano?”

“Yes.”

Malinski chewed thoughtfully at his mustache. “Let me ask you a question, Mervyn. When you visited the Viviano studio, how were relations between John and his brother Frank?”

“Well, Frank spoke of joining the Peace Corps.”

Oleg nodded. “And with Frank would go the Viviano photography business.”

Mervyn expressed surprise.

“John Viviano’s vanity is colossal,” said Malinski. “Or perhaps you were aware of it? John can never admit a deficiency, a lack of skill in himself. It’s almost pathological. I will tell you a secret which I believe he keeps even from Frank — I learned it purely by chance. Since it was not a confidence I feel free to repeat it to you. John poses as a photographer, but the fact is that he knows nothing of darkroom techniques. To remedy this he is quietly taking instruction.”

“No!”

“But yes. John is excellent with models. He has a fine eye for pose, lighting, composition. Any dolt can read exposure and snap a shutter. But the darkroom is as much a part of the creative process as the picture-taking itself, possibly more. And Frank is a darkroom genius. From a Brownie snapshot negative Frank can produce a salon print.

“John would like to become as proficient. So that someday, when Frank displays a beautiful print on which he has labored three hours, John can point out some trifling flaw and with the most negligent ease proceed to correct it. Frank will then either become hopelessly insane, or run out of the studio never to return.”

Mervyn swallowed a yawn. “That’s very interesting. But what does it have to do with where Viviano spent Friday night?”

“On Tuesday and Friday nights John pursues his darkroom studies at the San Francisco Recreation Center. His tutor is George Szano, one of my friends, from whom I derived this information.”